Beautiful Butterflies

Today the Mom's Meet-Up of Columbia County had me do a class for their playgroup.  We had children ages infant to 5 years old.  And yes, the babies got to paint, too!
We talked about it being spring, and the colors outside and the colors of butterflies.  Each table had examples of butterfly art... all very different:

Then the children got to create watercolor butterflies made out of coffee filters, wooden clothes pins and pipe cleaners 

This project is an oldie, but a goodie, especially when dealing with such a range of ages.  The older children used paint brushes and sponges with the watercolors.  Some children preferred to dab some paint here and there, while others filled up every inch with color. 

A separate table was set up for the younger toddlers and babies (lots of help from mom).  They had 3 modified versions of the project: shaking around a can or gallon zip lock bag with the coffee filter and sponges dipped in paint (look ma, no messy hands!) and also ice painting with several colors of gelatin mix on the coffee filters.  

They turned out very colorful!

Nice work everyone!  Thanks for having Half Pint Paint come to the playdate today!

Bringing Jasper John to Knob Hill

The Knob Hill Neighborhood Playgroup had a Half Pint Paint playdate today! The toddler and preschool aged children created Jasper Johns-inspired art (by the way... did you know this legend was born in our very own Augusta, GA?) After seeing samples of Johns' work, we created our own... we used cool and warm colors, finger painted on a newspaper collage, and finished off with letter cut-outs.  The kids also used q-tips as a fun paint tool for the letters.
I was so impressed by how the finishing pieces turned out.  All similar in design, but so different in style!